Shadowlover, lead me into light
by Shaynie
Summary: Hisoka and Tsuzuki have been through more than any other shinigami pair in history, however their newest mission is enough to shake Hisoka's thin grasp of sanity as well as Tsuzuki's tenous grip on life...
1. Shadow lover court me in my dreams

The sky itself was light as the boy trudged home in the fading light. The last few hours of office time had been difficult for the wheat haired man, and he felt more drained then he had been for a long time.  
  
It shouldn't honestly have been that hard. It should actually have been easy, as the two of them were not really required to be on any sort of mission work these days. That didn't really mean much in their office though. They still had to work, and while he would've preferred to do paper work, he had been relegated to help reorganize the library.  
  
With Tsuzuki.  
  
While that would normally not be too strenuous on him, the half shell the man had been able to erect as a mental shield was not nearly enough for him to be able to think coherently.  
  
For one thing, his mind kept straying back to his partner and trying to merge. For another, it was difficult to care enough to keep his mind wholly in his body.  
  
That was the problem with being an empath with telepathic undercurrents. The powers that controlled his mind (it was hardly the other way around) had been stretched to their limits in the previous months, all having to do with some rather serious casework. Because of that, the energy he normally kept to keep himself somewhat sane had been depleted. As of yet he could not bring himself to be able to recharge his energies.  
  
This was what left him wandering outside his home at dusk. He had been let off work hours earlier, but he just couldn't seem to control where he was going. All the souls that existed around him were almost too "loud" to control, and he had ended up lost in the middle of them and the listlessness that filled some of them.  
  
Which meant he wandered. He had to get rid of some of the listlessness or he would be stuck in the middle of the half dream state for longer then he cared to be. And then people would notice. If there was one thing his family had ground into him was that he could never be noticed.  
  
If he was noticed he got...well noticed. Then his father would beat him more often. One thing that always seemed to surprise Hisoka was the fact that his coworkers had always assumed that his father had treated him with, at least a little, respect before they had started calling him a 'monster'. The truth was, and had always been, that the Kurosaki clan relied almost solely on appearance. The curse that was laid on his family was more of an accident than anything else. But no one could know that.  
  
He had been telling that tale to one of the other children...but he'd only told it once. He had had to be hospitalized after that little endeavor. As a child he had not noticed it much, but then he had not been trained to notice...he had been trained to be unnoticed. Or at least, not be so smart or so stupid as to be singled out. The goal of his clan had been, surprisingly, to be average.  
  
If only his ancestors could see their clan now. They would be horrified.  
  
There was that listlessness again. He really had to control that...if he didn't he'd find himself at Tsuzuki's house...  
  
Oh. There it was.  
  
Hisoka mentally smacked himself, and turned resolutely to go when a hand fell on his shoulder heavily. He tried to shrug it off but it didn't budge. Hisoka refused to look up, knowing exactly who he would see.  
  
Tsuzuki stared down at his partner in perplexity. While he had noticed that Hisoka had not been as...together of late...he had not noticed to what extent. This was the first time he had truly examined the boy since...that... had happened. Hisoka's face was scrunched up slightly, as if he was losing even more weight. Already skinny that had granted him an emaciated look. The bags under the boys' eyes were deeper than average, and Tsuzuki berated himself for not noticing sooner. These were things he had to be watching out for as a partner.  
  
That was why the shinigami were partnered to begin with.  
  
Hisoka mumbled something incoherent, and Tsuzuki leaned in a little closer. "...unnoticed..." was the only thing he caught, but it was enough. There were times when he wondered if Hisoka truly realized how much everyone depended on him being in the office, or if the youngest shinigami even realized how much the office required of his permanent position in it. It stabilized the already volatile group in a way that had not been seen...since the last empath. Who Tsuzuki had known, quite intimately, was not as stable as Hisoka was.  
  
Tsuzuki sent a slight tendril of thought to catch the younger man, and was surprised at the ease at which he reached him. Was even more surprised to find the younger man reach back and utterly lose himself in his mind. So surprised, in fact that he almost forgot to catch the boy as he crumpled to the ground.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Hisoka came to awareness slowly, his eyes refusing to track anything, and his mind forgetting where exactly it belonged.  
  
He felt drained, and shieldless, which was only slightly worse then he had felt since this entire debacle had started. Which wasn't saying much.  
  
Hisoka looked around slightly, realizing that he was in Tsuzuki's bed and not the infirmary. That was a relief at least. That meant the others didn't know yet. He hoped to keep it that way.  
  
The room was not a mess as he expected, but it was comfortable. The double bed was covered with a deep blue duvet, and four fluffy pillows, which he was currently resting on. There was only one other thing in the room, and that was a rather old fashioned stained wood rocking chair that had...  
  
An amethyst-eyed man who was currently regarding him coolly, and resolutely denying access to his mind.  
  
Hisoka felt, for lack of a better word, like a fool. He knew exactly what had happened, and the mantra he had been whispering to himself, about remaining unnoticed, was almost completely gone.  
  
Tsuzuki's gaze tore into him, and Hisoka shriveled up at the glare.  
  
The older man finally broke the silence, looking skyward for a moment, only then returning to a contemplation of the youth before him.  
  
"You could have asked for a day off...to recuperate."  
  
Hisoka sighed, knowing where that had come from. "I've already taken enough days off. I need to be able to help...or else there's no point."  
  
"But...Hisoka. If you don't...then..." Tsuzuki's eyes misted over slightly. What happened before will happen again. I don't want to lose you this time.  
  
The last year had been more than a slight trial for the two shinigami. While Tsuzuki had been recuperating for his almost suicide five years earlier, there had been little to no change in the office. In the past year, that had changed completely.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
As usual I've managed to start a new story without finishing any of the rest. I can't promise they will be finished, but I can promise I will try. ^_^ Review ne? 


	2. Love of mist and shadows, all unclear

Lita – I think you know me a bit too well when it comes down to it ^_^

Zanzou – nyah? I wouldn't really go that far – you haven't even seen the plot yet! *blushes* Arigatou gozaimashita ne!

Yuka – aren't mornings fun? I'm writing this little bit after an eight-hour graveyard.

Tenshi – so am I…I mean. ^_^ Just you wait – it'll get pieced together as we go.

Anyone catch the allusion in the title yet?

~*~*~*~

Hisoka struggled to get to his feet, dumping the down covers into his lap as he moved around fruitlessly. Tsuzuki placed his firm hand on the boys chest, this time shielded tightly against the empaths' powers, and pushed down. The blonde fell bonelessly back onto the bed, muttering darkly under his breath.

The past year had been, for any other shinigami pairing, hell. For them it had been a little more than inconvenient. With a loss of shinigami in other divisions (for reasons undiscernibly even to Konoe) a few of the more permanent members of their division had been transferred. Saya and Yuma had been sent off to assist with the slightly more monotonous, but much more prestigious, Tassai division. They were now compiling files on all dead, for the Enma's judgments. Terazuma and Wakaba had then both opted to…move on. That decision had been hard for everyone in the office, but Terazuma had finally worked off all his debts, and Wakaba had no choice but to follow. The two had been developing an odd sort of symbiotic relationship since Tsuzuki's problems in Kyoto.

Thus they had received new shinigami to replace the four that were…in some ways…lost. This made things much tenser in the working environment. Especially, since there was really only one new shinigami hired for any extended period – the rest had quickly and efficiently eliminated their problems and continued on to the deeper areas of meifu. Most of them had not even begun to learn omnijitsu, much to the others chagrin. 

 Thus were they left with one more office problem. Hanateki Shikata was a very sullen man, he was bereft of many of his life's memories for reasons unknown to most shinigami, and he was perhaps the most strikingly gorgeous man all the more because of that. He was tall and waif thin, he and Hisoka could almost share clothing is Shikata not been taller then Tsuzuki. Shikata kept his black hair long and held back in a loose tale at the base of his neck. His skin was so pale to be almost translucent, and his eyes were a vivid green underneath arched eyebrows. He looked exotic, and was obvious one of the very beautiful and rare Eurasians that had stayed in Japan for almost all his life. Shikata's gorgeous face, and intense eyes were only a slight part of him though, and it was his unique power that made him all the more rare…and frightening.

Shikata had a unique control over spirits, living or dead. Like all shinigami he could see the spirits of the dead, but with him these spirits were called to him through a gift that was very nearly beyond his control. Often these creatures want nothing more than to _talk_ to him, and will come much easier if he is around. However they all saw him in very different ways, many of the male spirits seeing him as female. It was peculiar, but not peculiar enough to truly investigate…until Shikata started to have vivid nightmares of deaths _before_ they happened. Although this sometimes meant that they had ample time to discover where some of these murders were going to take place, and stop them if need be, it was draining to the man, and he became more and more withdrawn as time passed.

It was one of these missions that had plunged them all into their own personal hells so long ago.

Tsuzuki struggled for a semblance of balance and looked at Hisoka squarely. "You can't do that anymore" he said quietly, taking his hand away. "We had to merge to survive, not as you would end up lost – you have to ground yourself soon…or we'll be permanently anchored." Tsuzuki's face held none of the usual nonchalance, or even a slight bit of joy. In fact he looked tired, the past few months had been tiring for more than just him, and Hisoka had seemed to take the toll of brutality from almost everything that they had to survive through. 

With so few shinigami staying, the distracts had slowly become larger, and slightly overlapping so as to make training easier, and to give a slight space for injured shinigamis to recuperate with worrying about their districts too much. That meant that there were, in some cases, longer break periods, but the majority of the time there was a more strenuous workload added to everyone.

Tsuzuki shook his head. "Stop that." He said to his young partner sharply. "Playing it over in your head isn't going to fix anything."

Hisoka shook his head blurrily, noticing his surroundings for perhaps the first time.

"Tsuzuki…Tsuzuki's…room?" The lilting voice made Tsuzuki wince slightly, this was one of the many signs that Hisoka was losing himself more and more…and perhaps would have to be sent on if he could not save him. What Hisoka had been forced to do had been, in many ways, horrible…but it had to be done.

Tsuzuki shook his head angrily this time, and focused on the wheat haired "bon" in front of him. He had to focus or this would never work. Tsuzuki ran a hand through his, now longer, brown hair. He had let it grow out when he was recuperating in the infirmary, and when Hisoka had…in a small way complimented him he had just left it longer. Saya and Yuma had squealed over it when he had come back to work, but he had just ignored them at the time. 

Now he wished he hadn't. That was, neither here nor there. He wished he wouldn't get so caught up in past reminiscences. Perhaps that showed how much he himself had started to unconsciously link with Hisoka…

Who was still staring around blankly. _Time to remedy that_. 

Tsuzuki snapped his fingers in front of Hisoka's face, which granted him a slight reaction…which was more than he expected. Hisoka looked up at him, as if seeing him for the first time.

"So…c-c-cold. Tsuzuki…why is it so…cold…in here?" Tsuzuki reeled. That question, that memory was not one he wanted to live over just yet. He hugged the smaller boy to him, instinctively trying to warm the psychological cold that had settled over the boy…without inadvertently linking with him. 

He managed somehow, and Hisoka's teeth stopped chattering. The boy had been fazing in and out of reality off and on for the past month. It had gotten so bad that they had been taken off of direct duty.

Even with the shortage of people.

Tsuzuki sighed. There was, quite literally no time to waste. He had to figure out what Hisoka was doing to himself before it was too late…

~*~*~*~

Tsuzuki leaned against the lab doorway, waiting, quite impatiently for one Watari Yutaka. Watari had stayed on out of some odd sense of urgency, he had seemed to become more and more preoccupied with his experiments as time passed – almost to the point of ignoring his district. It had taken some very direct steps by Tatsumi to get the eccentric scientist back on the right track…and he had grudgingly taken it.

But Watari still came into the lab early every morning, and stayed late every night. That urgency was still there, and though the lab had not exploded in over six months, it was high time for that rather well appointed research area to explode.

Most people stayed away for that reason.

Then again there weren't many people left here for it to matter.

Tsuzuki pinched the bridge of his nice, hoping to gain some clarity from the slight touch.

It didn't help.

At that moment, Tsuzuki discerned footsteps in the distance. He bounded towards the sound, face hopefully and sighed with relief when he saw Watari.

The longhaired man looked at Tsuzuki in concern, his messy locks spilling over his shoulders. 

"Tsuzuki!" He exclaimed, moving towards him. 

Tsuzuki waved the scientist off, but nodded towards the infirmary.

"Bon…?" Watari asked softly, trailing the question off. He knew the answer just as well as Tsuzuki did. It was, at last, time.

"Can you set everything up. If we don't hurry…we'll lose the link."

Watari nodded, face determinedly set. His "bon" was one he would not ignore. This needed to be done…if it wasn't then they would all lose the young man they held dear. He turned around in a swish of orangey hair and started grabbing the things he needed from the lab. He made certain to grab the beaker of grayish ooze that had been sitting in his beaker, waiting for this day, for the last month and a half. He also scribbled off a note to Tatsumi so he would know where to look once he came in for work. He left 003, his ever-vigilant owl, to watch over his lab.

Finally ready, he turned towards the white walled infirmary. Heaving a sigh, he entered.

~*~*~*~

Unaware of how truly lost the boy had become, Watari did not expect to see the blonde haired boy sprawled in the bed, eyes wide open but unseeing. He did not expect to see the sweat that was pouring off of his skin, and he definitely did not expect to see the curse marks glowing vivid against his pale skin, forever changed by the events of the past year.

Enma save us. If he looses himself completely we'll all die. The amount of power hidden in those marks is enough to destroy this building five times over…and is much more destructive than five times the strength of Touda's fire. 

Watari blinked again, then threw himself into his work, forcing a slight grin to his face. After all this was going to be his most challenging work ever. He should enjoy at least a little of it when he could.

Tsuzuki gestured to him impatiently, the amethyst eyed man was already laid out on the bed next to his partner, the double IV already set up, simply awaiting his potion and the needles to be connected. 

Watari did both with lightening speed and efficiency.

"Are you ready?" Watari asked, before beginning the drip that would allow them to link, fully and completely without fear of problems on the "other side", and nutrients. The drug, for that's what it was, was part hallucinogenic, part nutrients, and part…well he wasn't exactly sure what it did. But it would work. This would put both of them in the same thought patterns, and the hypnotic stage that the drug would bring up would allow the two of them to fix whatever had originally begun to destroy Hisoka's mind.

As Watari watched the potion making its way to the two men, both very pale, he noticed all the minute similarities they had begun to take.

They had always been, in their own ways closed off. Now they would no one but the other near, and they had been allowed that, at least, as if in retribution for all they had to have suffered in the years they were partners. 

Watari waited a few more minutes, watching as their breathing patterns slowly matched each other, and stayed that way. Hisoka's butterfly light breaths matching with Tsuzuki's almost snores. Tsuzuki had fallen past trance directly into sleep, and Hisoka had not even moved an inch since the other man had entered.

But still he waited, waiting until even their slightest motions were reflected in the other, almost before the other had even begun to move. Then he knew it was time to start.

It was after all, know or never.

"You're sitting across from each other, Kachou is giving the new case details. Tsuzuki isn't paying attention…and Hisoka, you, you're getting irritated with him. But just before you say something Kachou catches your attention with a name…"

And thus, did events begin again.


	3. ShadowLover, comfort me in pain

Hisoka sat, rigid, his back straight, trying to ignore his surroundings. The lucid dreaming never seemed to help, and yet they always tried to throw him back to this day. Once more, to live through the horror. He shuddered, trying to shell his mind into Tsuzuki's consciousness, to ignore the goings.

_He was, of course, cheerily thrown out. Tsuzuki blanked his memories and forced him back to where he had been when this all had started_.

"Jusei."

Hisoka's small form shivered, seeming to contract in on itself for a few moments. The meeting room seemed to be closing in on him, and he glared with irritation at his partner. A strange sense of déjà vu had encased him, and he refused to fall victim to it.

 Tsuzuki sat to his right, happily eating a cake of some sort. The man had his same ruffled tie and trench on, and he looked anything but attentive. Why that would offend Hisoka day in and day out would never really make sense to the young shinigami, but it seemed to irritate him all the more that morning.

"Kurosaki-kun?" Tatsumi's voice pulled Hisoka out of his reverie and he jerked.

"Aa…hai." Hisoka muttered shortly, turning slightly crimson with the secretary's unwavering gaze upon him.

"Tsuzuki-san and you will be heading down to Tokyo to investigate this case tomorrow. Please go over the details in the folder."

Then came the common notices about funding and budgeting. Hisoka was still lost in his hazy dream world when he found that both he and Tsuzuki were in their office. Hisoka again shivered slightly. The opaqueness of his surroundings was starting to bother him, but he refused to go to the infirmary again. There was no point, and besides he had to go over the information in the folder, though he had a strange feeling he would already know most of the "facts" of this case.

"Na, Hisoka-kun. We've got a bit of work a head of us don't we?" Tsuzuki said, leaning casually against his litter filled workspace. Hisoka nodded tiredly, and slumped into a chair. The air shimmered in front of him, and he felt light for a moment before feeling himself deposited down on earth.

His mouth gaped, then he quickly shut it, the memories of the previous day filling in happily for themselves. He had been packing until late, and he and Tsuzuki had met just before leaving for Chijou. There had been no weird time shifts.

Of course not.

Hisoka shook his head. This day, he knew, would be long. How he knew he could not have told anyone, but he did know that. His partner was looking at him strangely, a disturbingly familiar and sad expression on his face. When he caught Hisoka looking he immediately "brightened", throwing a giant grin on his face before dragging Hisoka to the nearest sweet store.

"Ba…Baka!" Hisoka whispered into his partner's ear, feeling that same sense of dizziness overcome him.

This time it was tinged, slightly, with a black overtone. The overtone was, without a doubt the creature they had been forced to find, though Hisoka could not have claimed that the creature left a proper empathic presence.

It was there, the aura existed, but it was as if it were an echo. As if they were following a shadow of something that was far, far away somewhere else.

The mist came over Hisoka's face as he slumped against Tsuzuki's form, and he awoke in much the same position.

This time, his clothing was ripped in various places and the blood oozed sluggishly from many abrasions.

Jusei, the creature they had been told to find, stood in front of them. The demon had long white hair, interspersed with blue highlights at random intervals. He was lithely muscled, and wore black breeches and naught else. There were huge wings coming off his back that looked as if they were made of ultra hot fire. Closer to his body the flame was blue, while on the outskirts it was a flickering white.

Obviously an illusion.

But illusions didn't hurt that much. Illusions couldn't known Tsuzuki onto the ground out cloud.

Could they?

 Hisoka lay paralyzed, trying to wake his partner up, but with little knowledge of what the creature had done to his partner there was nothing he could do. And while Hisoka deliberated over his incapacitated partner the _thing_ had managed to inch closer and closer to them.

Hisoka threw up a kekei quickly. Or rather he tried to. The ofuda he held simply sizzled ineffectually when he had called out the words of command. He looked around wildly, trying to find a way to free himself, when the creature gripped his shoulder.

Hisoka yipped in pain, his body spasming as the white-hot flame lanced through his skin. He cried out in mental anguish as the purely perverse evil that existed in the beings consciousness entered his, breaking through all his barriers and filling him with the _need_ to fill the wishes of the Demon Lord that had taken up residence in Tokyo.

It had originally come to discover what it could about Tsuzuki – to report back to the other Lords of Hell what the little Princeling had done, and was doing. But the princeling was unimportant when one considered the beauty of the partner.

The beauty that Muraki had once devoured. Beauty that was already tarnished. Not perfect, but close enough. Tarnished enough to make the taking all the more interesting. Less easy to break. More easy to bend to the will.

Spiraling out of the past, Hisoka's consciousness clung tenaciously to Tsuzuki's mind. It would not return to the haunted shell that held too many degredations. It would **not** return to any of it. 


End file.
